Bletchley Park
<body, history> A country house and grounds some 50 miles North of
London, England, where highly secret work deciphering intercepted German
military radio messages was carried out during World War Two. Thousands of
people were working there at the end of the war, including a number of early
computer pioneers such as Alan Turing.
The nature and scale of the work has only emerged recently, with total secrecy
having been observed by all the people involved. Throughout the war, Bletchley
Park produced highly important strategic and tactical intelligence used by the
Allies, (Churchill's "golden eggs"), and it has been claimed that the war in
Europe was probably shortened by two years as a result.
An exhibition of wartime code-breaking memorabilia, including an entire working
Colossus, restored by Tony Sale, can be seen at Bletchley Park on alternate
weekends.
The Computer Conservation Society (CCS), a specialist group of the British
Computer Society runs a museum on the site that includes a working Elliot
mainframe computer and many early minicomputers and microcomputers. The CCS hope
to have substantial facilities for storage and restoration of old artifacts, as
well as archive, library and research facilities.
Telephone: Bletchley Park Trust office +44 (908) 640 404 (office hours and open
weekends).
(1998-12-18)
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